alt Hacker NewsCorrect me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the scale of our solar system minuscule compared to the distance between stars? Presumably if another star gets close enough to affect Jupiter, it’s going to affect everything to varying degrees.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the scale of our solar system minuscule compared to the distance between stars? Presumably if another star gets close enough to affect Jupiter, it’s going to affect everything to varying degrees.
Yes you're correct! It's about a factor of 50,000 between the orbit of Jupiter and the distance to the nearest star.
But the orbit of Jupiter is still a lot bigger than the size of the Sun. To give numbers: The radius of the Sun is 700km, the radius of the orbit of Jupiter is 7*10^8 km (approx, it varies a bit), and the distance to the nearest star is 4*10^13 km.